As I marshalled my courage to pull the blizzard cover off my lettuce, a press release from Den Corner Restaurants, owners of the Denver eateries Sushi Den, Izakaya Den and OTOTO, crossed my desk. Earlier this year, the restaurant consortium bought a 6.5-acre farm in Brighton to supply its fresh produce. Now it’s broken ground on a 3,000-square-foot, passive solar greenhouse to keep that supply going through the winter months, when many fresh veggies are shipped in from warmer states.

The new greenhouse will use “principles of building science including heavy perimeter, wall, and roof insulation, automated insulating shutters, high solar heat gain glazing, systems for controlling solar light and heat to maximize growth, plenty of thermal mass, and carefully controlled ventilation” so that the restaurant can grow its own micro-greens, herbs, and some citrus year-round. Special pipes will route warm air under the soil so that it never freezes.

Pipes will route warm air under the soil at the Den Corner Restaurants Greenhouse

Back at my own house, I’d tossed a white wool U.S. Navy surplus blanket across my brick planter that first cold night last weekend. And then … things got busy and got really cold, and what with this surprise and that surprise … I never did peel it back and cut the lettuce. This morning, the sun was back, and I was braced to find frozen, matted green slime.

I found survivors instead. The warm, south-facing brick planter box surely had something to do with it. Things were a bit smashed and matted down from the snow load, and many arugula leaves (which, frankly is most of what remains) did freeze. But check out that leaf lettuce. And there’s some tattered tat soi peeking out. It all makes me want to build a cold frame to put over those bricks and see just what winter will let me get away with. Hey, if it’s good enough for those chic chefs at Sushi Den …

Now: Who wants to bet me I can keep this zombie lettuce going until the solstice?

Susan Clotfelter has always played in the dirt, but got dragged into gardening as an obsession when she reclaimed her hell corner: a weed-infested patch of clay inhabited by one tough, lonely lilac and a thicket of weeds. Along with training as a Colorado State University Extension Master Gardener volunteer, she dug deeper with beds of herbs and lettuce at her home and rows of vegetables wherever she could borrow land. She writes for The Denver Post and other publications and appears on community radio.

Julie's passion for gardening began in spring of 2000 when she bought a fixer-upper in Denver's Park Hill neighborhood, and realized that the landsape was in desperate need of some TLC. During the drought of 2003, she decided to give up on bluegrass and xeriscape her front yard. She wrote about the journey in the Rocky Mountain News, in a series called Mud, Sweat & Tears: A Xeriscape story. Julie is an avid veggie gardener as well as a seasoned water gardener.